Industry's Brightest Plan Out Future Tech

The best and brightest gathered at the Future in Review (FiRe) conference last week to discuss digital technology, biology and energy policy, with broad intermingling between the themes. In fact, one recurring theme had to do with getting experts from many disciplines together to solve problems.

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The annual Future in Review (FiRe) conference feels like an executive conference from the outside, with big names from industry gathering together. But on the inside it's more like Plato's Academy, with conversations with some of the brightest minds on the planet, both formal and open ended.

The main themes of the show this year centered on digital technology, biology and energy policy, with broad intermingling between the themes. In fact, one recurring theme had to do with getting experts from many disciplines together to solve problems.

Intel's Eric Dishman, the head of an internal health research and innovation group, stressed that by bringing anthropologists and engineers together, "innovation starts to happen making sure that you are solving the right problems, not just bringing gadgets." That theme was echoed by author Janine Benyus, who advocated bringing "biologists to the design table" as well.

Because the conference focuses on the future, rather than the now, it provides some tantalizing glimpses into what the world will be like over the coming years. Here's a look at some of the high points of the show, and some of the more interesting predictions.

Biology

One of the more fascinating sessions focused on biomimicry, or the emerging field of developing industrial processes that emulate those from nature. Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimicry Institute, provided a number of examples of where biological design provides a better way to innovate.

Concrete, according to Benyus, can be more effectively developed by "borrowing the recipe from mollusks and making limestone out of CO2." This isn't just a flight of science fiction; she described a device that combines seawater and carbon dioxide to make limestone and clean air.

CO2 can also be used to create biodegradable plastics, similar to how plants convert it into starches and sugars. Benyus pointed to a newly discovered process of using a zinc catalyst to combine CO2 with limonene oxide (which comes from orange peels, among other plans) to create plastic.

Benyus went on to talk about how the scalloped shape of a whale's flipper can create more efficient airplane wings. She pointed to research by Philip Watts of Applied Fluid Engineering that showed that scalloped wings create a 6 percent increase in lift and a 32 percent decrease in drag. The new designs are being applied to more efficient wind turbines, and could help make more efficient airplanes as well.

Biological designs can also be used to reduce energy used by buildings, and to gather water from the air. Benyus pointed to a new material developed by UK engineering firm QinetiQ that sucks water out of the air ten times better than current fog catchers. The material's design is patterned after the shell of the Nambian desert beetle, which uses smooth bumps to extract drinking water from the air  in one of the driest deserts in the world.

The blueberry was also singled out as possibly improving the efficiency of solar power cells. Benyus explained that leaves are more than 90 percent efficient at converting solar energy into water, oxygen and energy, and that a similar blueberry-fueled process could create more efficient panels that even work in low light.

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